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An LSC is illuminated by a laser beam (central spot) resulting in luminescence that is emitted from the edges and projected onto a white business card. The faintly visible concentric rings and different colors of light on the business card result from microcavity effects.

An international team of scientists, led by Penn State's Beth Shapiro, has discovered that the female ancestor of all living polar bears was a brown bear that lived near present-day Britain and Ireland 20,000 to 50,000 years ago. Click on the image above to view more photos.

Moses H. W. Chan, the Evan Pugh Professor of physics.
He is distinguished in his work on phase transitions--the conditions under which a material changes from one phase to another--in quantum fluids, in reduced dimensions, and in the presence of disorder. The principles he and his research group have helped to establish have proven to be useful in understanding a wide variety of problems in condensed-matter systems undergoing phase transitions.

Susan Lemieux, a research physicist at the imaging center, explains how SLEIC's mock scanner prepares human subjects for the scanning experience in the 3 Tesla MRI machine, the University's largest-diameter and newest MRI equipment. This rehearsal avoids data-collection delays and errors caused by anxious or oversized subjects. The mock scanner saves both time and money by giving subjects a chance to experience how the scanner will sound and feel, and also ask questions about their instructions ahead of time, before operating the expensive and heavily scheduled research equipment.

Researchers Henry J. Donahue, the Michael and Myrtle Baker professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation, left, and M.D./Ph.D. student Shane Lloyd developed a bone-density experiment that will be aboard the last space shuttle mission.

The Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF) being built at Penn State will be installed at the William P. Hobby-Robert E. Eberly Telescope (HET), one of the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world. The HET was conceived by Penn State astronomers. Click on the image above for more photos of the telescope.

Thirteen students from Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, two geology professors (Richard Alley and Sridhar Anandakrishnan), and two instructors (Eric Spielvogel and Anna Brendle) are spending three weeks in the American Southwest visiting national parks in Arizona, Utah and Colorado for a geology class called "Taking Geology of the National Parks On Location, On Line, and On TV." . For a first-person account from the action, click here.

This Nov. 17, 2004, handout image from NASA shows an artist's rendition of the Swift spacecraft observing a gamma burst. Swift is a first-of-its-kind, multi-wavelength observatory dedicated to the study of gamma-ray burst (GRB) science. During its nominal two-year mission, Swift is expected to observe more than 200 bursts, which will represent the most comprehensive study of GRB afterglow to date.

Examining a few of the Hemingway letters are, from left, Sandra Stelts, curator of rare books and manuscripts at the University Libraries; Sandra Spanier, Penn State professor of English and general editor of the Hemingway Letters Project; and William L. Joyce, the Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair and head of the Special Collections Library.

B. Voight examining Plymouth, the destroyed former capitol of Montserrat.

In 2002, Voight also helped organize a team of scientists to form the Caribbean Andesite Lava Island Precision Seismo-geodetic Observatory, or CALIPSO. “The acronym came into being after a very fine margarita imbibed in Washington, D.C.,” Voight notes, adding: “The name fits in all respects.” Seven years later, the Soufriere Hills volcano remains one of the world’s most closely studied stratovolcanoes.

President Barack Obama addresses the audience at Rec Hall on the University Park campus on Thursday, Feb. 3, as he talks about the Energy Innovation Hub for Energy Efficient Buildings at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, a federally-funded research initiative led by Penn State.